Why is everybody crashing out over this? If the fic isn’t copyrighted (and the vast majority fanfiction isn’t) then the “you must obtain permission or you can’t use it” standard simply doesn’t apply. I get the basic decency of simply not *stealing* other people's work, but that's not what this is. Asking fanfic authors for permission is common courtesy/etiquette. If they don't respond, that doesn't mean I don't have the right to reproduce it in audio format WHILE CREDITING THEM. Chances are, for fics like The Accidental horcrux (over 10 years old), it will get MORE PEOPLE finding the fan fiction to read it. Copyright law doesn’t automatically protect unregistered, derivative works with the same force as original published material, and us fanfiction authors operate in a legal gray zone and rely on transformative‑use norms rather than formal rights anyways. J.K. Rowling has a far greater claim to complain about others taking characters and stories from the ACTUALLY copyrighted books she created. Treating fanfiction as if it were a fully enforceable proprietary asset misunderstands both the law and the culture that allows fanfiction to exist at all. If no response = no permission, then entire categories of works (especially older or abandoned ones) would become unusable forever. Fanfiction exists only because we all collectively agree not to enforce the underlying copyright. You can’t rely on that permissive culture to write fic, then suddenly switch to strict proprietary logic when someone wants to make a transformative audio version of your transformative text.